I randomly caught a few bars of "Feelin' Blue" from their Willie and the Poor Boys album brought me back...I probably hadn't heard this since I lived in Berkeley in the mid '70s, but it took probably less than a second to recognize it.
Credence Clearwater Revival. Technically, from El Cerrito, a town just north of Berkeley, but they made most of their records at Fantasy Records, on Parker Street, in Berkeley. I lived on Parker myself during school year 74-5, although over a mile from the studio.
Country Joe and the Fish. Joe McDonald's family didn't move to Berkeley until he was an adult, but his mother would be mayor while I lived there and the band would be formed there. I saw them once, Country Joe without the rest of the band a couple of times. Of course everybody saw them at Woodstock: "Give me an F. Give a U..."
Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. Their one big hit, Hot Rod Lincoln, was very out of character for them. I saw them at Winterland, the Oakland Coleseum, several free shows in various parks. They always put on a great show.
Joy of Cooking. A short-lived but terrific band, led by two women. One of them, Terry Garthwaite, sang in a style strongly resembling Mavis Staples and I was a fan of them before I'd ever heard of the Staples Singers.
Greg Kihn Band. I first saw Greg Kihn, busking, solo, with his guitar in 1973 on the steps of the Student Union building on the Berkeley campus. He played there several times, until he came back with a full band. I wasn't really surprised when he had a hit on MTV in the early 80s. His band was largely from another Berkeley band, the Earth Quake, which was pretty local. One of their songs was called AC-DC and it enough resembled a different, later band called AC-DC that at first I thought it was the same band.
The Klezmorim were a Klezmer band that got its start playing in Sproul Plaza, where I saw them several times. They had some success
Green Day and Counting Crows were both from Berkeley, and didn't get their start until after I'd left.
There are of course a bunch of other bay area bands that frequently played Berkeley. I saw Jerry Garcia at the Keystone, and the Grateful Dead famously played the Greek Theater on campus several times. I saw Merle Saunders a couple of times on campus. Tower of Power didn't come to Berkeley much, but their home base was just south in Oakland. Santana
